Groundwork USA works predominantly in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods and in communities of color, places where brownfields, environmental contamination, and illegal dumping are all too common, access to parks and playgrounds, grocery stores, transit, and other healthy living infrastructure is limited, and the continued legacies of systemic disinvestment, poverty, and racism are a daily challenge. Though unjust, the on-the-ground realities faced by the communities in which Groundwork Trusts work present opportunities to catalyze transformation and renewal driven by grassroots efforts and everyday people, especially young people.
Working with community residents through inclusive and equitable partnerships and processes, Groundwork Trusts engage people in working across difference, building trust, countering historic and systemic disparities, and unifying local residents to shape and create a vision and positive change of their own definition within their neighborhood landscapes and wider communities.
Groundwork USA is a national leader in place-based and people-centric strategies for assuring more equitable access to benefits emerging from thoughtful, inclusive neighborhood improvements and redevelopment planning.
Across our network, Groundwork Trusts are forging accessible paths to opportunity. We do this by leading and shaping community development and redevelopment efforts to be more equitable, more relevant to, and more inclusive of local communities–in essence, putting people first.
Our practitioners integrate the following key principles into their practice:
Groundwork Trusts develop deep relationships with community constituencies whose voices often go unheard. We help amplify those voices so communities’ direct on-the-ground experience can inform funders, policymakers, and elected officials, and help translate ideas into action.
Our practitioners engage communities of color and low- and moderate-income populations at the intersection of environmental, economic, and social justice over the long-term, where traditional planning processes fail to connect.
Our projects and programs are designed to meet people where they are, and engage them in the ways that feel meaningful and culturally relevant to them. We focus in this way because communities of color and low-moderate income communities stand to gain the most from the types of “healthy community” improvements that don’t come around often enough in places experiencing longstanding disinvestment.
Groundwork Trusts operate in places where sustained disinvestment, marginalization, and limited access to opportunity have been the norm for far too long.
Groundwork Trusts often focus their efforts in post-Industrial neighborhoods facing environmental contamination, economic stagnation, and the lack of green infrastructure to mitigate the impacts of a changing climate and promote health and well-being.
In response to these destructive legacies, Groundwork practitioners’ approach is rooted firmly in the belief that solutions to these intractable challenges lie within the community. Groundwork Trusts connect with residents and nurture connections among neighbors. We forge an array of inclusive and equitable openings for residents to organize, plan, implement, and sustain relevant, hands-on actions to change the disproportionate impacts of environmental, economic, and social injustice.
The goal of such efforts in Groundwork communities across the US is to disrupt and begin to correct decades of systemic disinvestment, marginalization, and racism, and pave the way for a more equitable balance of power across communities and more equitable redevelopment efforts overall.
For decades, the white-dominated conservation and environmental movements have focused heavily on protecting distant wilderness landscapes, perpetuating a disconnect from the realities of urban life, as well as grassroots efforts to enhance and protect the urban environment. Groundwork focuses on connecting these two worlds deliberately through our youth programming.
The lower-income youth and youth of color we work with often don’t know many people who work in or visit public lands. And when they do venture into national parks and wildlife refuges, they don’t often find many people who “look like them.” With 80% of Americans now living in urban areas, Groundwork Trusts are leading the way in shifting the culture and focus of the mainstream conservation and environmental movements so they are truly inclusive and inviting of urban populations, people of color, and the realities of urban life.
Through our youth development programming, Groundwork USA and our network of Trusts is working to reverse the systemic under-representation of diversity in national parks and public lands. We take a dual approach, helping urban youth develop their leadership potential through service-learning opportunities in national parks and public lands, while engaging those same youth in relevant, hands-on work to transform their own communities in tangible ways.
By connecting urban youth with National Parks and National Wildlife Refuges, and the federal conservation agencies with urban communities, we seek to instill an appreciation of the natural environment along with an understanding that the environment isn’t something inaccessible and “out there” — it’s a built and natural resource that youth can change and protect within their own communities.
